Warming filters

DadaKopf

Rummaging through the hosue, I found a few filters. One of them is an 81B warming filter. I gather these are used for outdoor photography, maybe to take a bit of bite out of harsh blue light. What other uses can you get out of this? Does it produce a kind of dusky or early morning feeling to photos? Like on those dumb The Thrills photos (sorry, first example that came to mine)?

Also found an 80A blue filter to correct for artificial light when using daylight film which will be really useful.

norma

The 81 series filters can be used to correct for the bluish colour of the light when shooting in shaded areas. It can also be used at high altitudes where, again, the light tends to be more blue. For less correction, you could try a 1A Skylight (which is more magenta than yellow), and for more correction you could try an 85 series filter (which is more orangey).
Your 81B can also enhance that "golden hour" lighting, but you need to be very careful not to overdo it.
Norma.

DadaKopf

Yeah, "golden hour" - that's the ticket. Does the 80A also warm up the light given off by flashes?

Here, have you any idea what filters you could buy to filter for sodium street lighting?

norma

The 80A filter is designed to correct the orange colour balance of incandescent light. Flash units, however, have a colour temperature similar to daylight. So, if you use the 80A with your flash, your photos will take on the blue colour of the filter itself.

But I'm wondering if that's not a typo, and you meant the 81B instead of the 80A? In that case, it may work (I haven't tried it, so I can't say what the results would be like). Just remember to adjust your exposure to compensate for the filter if you're not using a dedicated flash unit with TTL flash metering.

I've never used a filter for sodium lighting myself, but Singh-Ray make one called a Lucalox. Just bear in mind that it only works with tungsten-balanced film. You could also put together a couple of CC filters to correct for the lighting using this chart. I believe there are different types of sodium lights with different colour temperatures, so you may need to experiment a bit or use negative film so you can correct the small colour casts at the printing stage.

There are also some filters made for use in astro-photography by Lumicon and IDAS (Tokai), but I don't know how well they'd work for shooting on the ground.

Norma.

norma

By the way, if you do get good results with one of those, would you post it here?
Norma.

DadaKopf

Yeah, 81B.

Hmm, would I have to expose +.5 or +1 with that warming filter? The 80A says +1.

norma

Yeah, about 1/2 stop should do it for the 81B.

Are you sure about the 80A being just one stop? Mine needs a two-stop adjustment. If yours is just one, then I want to know what kind it is! Losing two stops of light can be a killer, especially seeing as I don't have very fast lenses.

Norma.

DadaKopf

Balls. It's actually this one: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh2/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=13937&is=REG

It's an 80C. What the hell is that used for exactly?

norma

That filter must be lying around a while. It's for use with the aluminium-filled flash bulbs that were used before electronic flash was introduced. It's really too weak for use with household lights or floodlamps. However, you could try using it with print film. It will correct for at least some of the colour cast, and then hopefully what's left could be removed at the printing stage.
Norma.